Jason Caminiti ENG 4013/4:05 Dilemma 11 / 29 / 95
The dilemma of privacy versus security is becoming ever more prevalent in today's society due to recent advances in technology. We can now have many people access one computer and use it's resources at the same time. With this brings the ability of the person using it to communicate in many ways, some of them being criminal. One could conceivably access a computer and do damage to the system or plot an even larger crime, from burglary to a bank robbery. One of the more frequent problems involves electronic harassment. Users will in one way or another harass another user using this medium, the user being harassed deserves to be safe from this intrusion. A larger concern comes into play when you choose to invade a users privacy to bring security to the system. If the administrators of the computer watch the harassing user they are intruding on his privacy. In many cases there is no proof at the onset that there is anything illegal going on. However, for security reasons the administrators watch the user.
The imposition on private ciizens by administrators will probably not end simply with looking for electronic crime. If we allow this seemingly small intrusion to occur we are setting ourselves up for a much larger problem in the future. It is quite conceivable that one day our privacy will be compromised by the crime fighting agencies to the point of having them watch our every move. It seems almost a logical conclusion, that if we have security problems, such as crime and violence we would be doing a favor to the citizenry if we protected them by surveillance. We would make sure that they were secure in their own environment. This would make our country a much more secure place, and allow our citizens to live in peace.
The conflict here is privacy versus safety. If we protect our citizens by watching over them, and keeping them safe from evil, we are limiting their privacy. If not taking it away completely. If we give our citizens complete privacy and do not allow our law enforcement individuals the ability to search and seize on probable cause, we are allowing many crimes to occur without hinderance. Either way we could be allowing the extreme to occur on one side or the other. If we do go for privacy our country could fall into almost complete ruins. Our streets may be unfit to travel on, for fear that we may be injured in the passing. On the other side, if we do go towards complete security, we are going to be living in a world where no one will be able to do the slightest thing without being watched. This could lead to not being able to think for yourself, or not being able to think against the established norm, for fear that it would hurt the majority.
There is almost no way to come to a compromise on a dilemma of such stature. Today we have limited privacy, with our law enforcement personnel able to search us, we have very little privacy if we are thought to be doing something illegal. Security and the feeling of being safe is not one of the most prevalent in our society. We have criminals walking around with guns, and drugs and not being found by the authorities in time to prevent their use. This is a dilemma which may never be solved, not until humans can live together and accept each other in a friendly manner, can we truly have privacy and security.
This essay is Copyright (C) 1996 Jason Caminiti. You may not use any part of this essay without written permission of it's author.<-Home->